The Future of Consumerist

Over the last twelve years, Consumerist has been a steadfast proponent and voice on behalf of consumers, from exposing shady practices by secretive cable companies to pushing for action against dodgy payday lenders. Now, we’re joining forces with Consumer Reports, our parent organization, to cultivate the next generation of consumer advocacy.

Stay tuned as Consumerist’s current and future content finds its home as a part of the Consumer Reports brand. In the meantime, you can access existing Consumerist content below, and we encourage you to visit Consumer Reports to read the latest consumer news.

Update: After questions concerning the study at the center of the earlier post wondering how much a Big Mac would go up in price if workers were paid more, over at Forbes the story has been updated and corrected.

As we noted in the original post, the work of Arnobio Morelix is the result of one person’s number-wrangling. It appears he wrangled those numbers without taking into account the franchisee model or multiple “other factors,” Clare O’Connor writes in the update.

In all likelihood, McDonald’s would probably figure out a way to keep a Big Mac the same price, notes another Forbes writer, Tim Worstall, on the topic.

Just another reason to keep crunching those numbers, people. The more the merrier.

Because people are thinking with their stomachs and wallets and we are always hungry/in need of saving money, one curious researcher did some number-crunching to come up with an answer. The people must know if McDonald’s food will break the bank or barely make a ripple when and if workers earn more money.

Clare O’Connor of Forbes.com cites the number wrangling of Arnobio Morelix, who found himself wondering if he’d have to dig into his couch cushions in a world where fast food workers make $15. According to his math — and we’re sure there are plenty of others crunching the numbers out there — if workers’ salaries doubled, that doesn’t mean the price of certain items would also increase by 100%.

Morelix found that if workers get the $15 per hour they want, a Big Mac would cost $0.68 more than it does now, up from $3.99 to $4.67. Want a whole meal? That’ll be $6.66 instead of $5.69. And the Dollar Menu would likely need to be renamed because items would cost $1.17, Morelix said.

Of course, this is just one scenario, predicated on something that hasn’t come to pass. One would assume that if McDonald’s could get away with charging $0.68 more for a Big Mac, it would. Only time will tell.